Today, many people use the internet for work, online banking, social networking, shopping, and many other activities. Unfortunately, internet usage is not without its dangers. Malicious software is becoming increasingly prevalent, threatening to compromise a user's safety, personal information, data integrity and computer-based functioning.
Applications are available for identifying malicious websites. Some of these applications request a third-party provider to shut down a malicious website after it has been identified. This is not an optimal approach at least because users remain exposed to the malicious website until it has been shut down, which could take one, two, three or more days. Other applications block a user from accessing a malicious website, but will not shut down the malicious website. This is also not desirable because users who cannot access the applications remain vulnerable to the malicious website.
In would be desirable, therefore, to provide architecture for identifying a malicious website and, after the identification, initiating both a take-down procedure for the malicious website and protecting users from the malicious website in the interim.